chinese penhold vs shakehand? Advan- and Disadvan-

Loop40mm wrote: Forehand grip:  Shakehand has a natural angle and is in ready position to loop the ball.  For penhold, one has to press the thumb to get a proper angle to loop the ball.

LilWaynePingPong wrote: Personally, I think Penhold WITH RPB has all the advantages of shakehand with the RPB side being a little more powerful, at least in my experience. The weight of the bat is further to the head thus shots are slightly more powerful than SH. The main disadvantage of Penhold, in my opinion, is the inability (well, it's possible but very difficult to do) to chop balls but that's only if the player would choose to go defensive anyway. Blocks at easy to execute with traditional PH backhand though.

I agree, the grip does not lend itself easily to chopping, but you can chop quite effectively if you want to, particularly on the backhand side, the chop has nice under- and side-spin on it. And I use the forehand chop quite effectively as well, from the days I used to play primarily as a penhold defender.

Obviously we all have our own personal experience with the way we play table tennis. 

 

I don’t need to intentionally press the thumb in the penhold RPB to generate a lot of spins in looping.  If one has to open the paddle, especially for blocking, I can see one has to press the thumb.  Instead of pressing the thumb in RPB, bending the knees is probably a better approach to hit the backhand.  That is the preferred stance anyway. 

 

On the other hand, pressing the thumb is probably inherent in holding penhold properly, whether forehand or RPB.  Perhaps I might have a slight press with the thumb without even realizing it.

 

The purpose of pressing the thumb in forehand is to adjust the angle of the paddle similar to the angle of the shakehand grip.  I see the purpose of pressing the thumb in RPB is to open the paddle.  I don't loop with open paddle against top spin or no spin.  Against underspin, I drop the paddle to closer to vertical position.

 

Penhold RPB generates sidespins naturally.

Roar, block a righty rbp loop and notice how it tends back to opponents BH.

Then block a Righty shakehand BH loop and watch it go to opponent FH.

The contract point on the ball is different for each.

I can hardly play shakehand actually. I play better Cpen with my left hand then I do shakehand with my right hand. So Cpen is the only way to go for me, it feel natural. And I curl my fingers behind the blade, I don't keep them spread out so the transition from forehand to backhand is instantaneous for me. Maybe because I played penhold the first time I ever held a blade, maybe because the guy who taught me played Cpen. This is when I was still in school. I tried RPB ver recently and it will take too much unlearning for me to be able to get any kind of reliability with that stroke. I prefer the conventional backhand block. 

Speedster wrote: Krantz wrote: I don't know, this lack of crossover point thing looks like a hoax to me.. With TBH strokes you still have to change the blade's position from pointing right-way to pointing left-way and you still have an indecision area (and the same 180 deg movement required - just different plane) This is true. Switching BH to FH is actually easier with shakehand. Since modern penholders don't curl fingers on back as old chinese players used to, they always have to change grip when switching between TB and FH.

It all depends on how you play, and your grip. I play PH (RBH) and  i love it. the only time i change my grip is after my sever. And no you don`t change your FH to BH if you do then stop, it`s bad becuase it` going to be hard for you to get ready for the next hit.

APW46 wrote: The real advantage of penhold over shakehands traditionally is that the shakehands grip has a 'crossover point' the point infront/just to the side of the body, where a player has to make either a f/hand or b/hand stroke. Its all about decision time, and a sh/hands player can be tactically beaten here, top class players aim for this spot constantly. The main advantage of traditional P/hold is that this weakness shown in Sh/hands does not exist, because all received balls are taken with the f/hand face of the bat, apart from extreme wide to the b/hand wing balls, which are a real problem because the natural angle of the wrist is terminally unplayable. Some Chinese players have overcome this with the introduction of RPB ( reverse penhold backhand) which uses via a grip change, the reverse side of the traditional pen hold b/hand.  But paradoxically, that causes a 'crossover point' losing slightly the very advantage of pen hold play.

I really like this response!!!



However, I am surprised that nobody mentioned footwork. Penhold requires significantly more emphasis on the footwork. Specifically moving wide using cross over steps in each direction is very important, so that the backhand remains unexploited and so that the movement wide to the forehand cannot be used a stop to exploit the backhand.

Watch Samsonov playing Ryu Seung Min - Samsonov was stretching RSM wide on the forehand and then being gentle and consistent on the backhand. Even with Ryu's footwork, he was unable to cover all of that ground. With that in mind, it seems that it takes longer to develop great Penhold players, but also once their age begins to catch up with the, it is harder to stay in the same form.

Penhold also requires close to the table position. Backing off the table for a penhold player is very bad. The distance for movement increases while the power decreases. I also feel ( maybe erroneously ) that penhold "wingspan" is shorter. Meaning shakehand can reach farther using the grip, even by slightly sliding the fingers off the handle like Jorgen Perrson.

Besides Xu Xin, there has not been anyone new in the Junior levels with Penhold grip that stands out. I guess even Chinese are beginning to convert their thoughts towards grip.

Cherry Zhao and Crystal Huang teach RPB very well.